At a meeting a few days earlier with his national command, Putin boasted that, whereas since World War II the Soviet and then Russian armed forces had been lagging behind the United States and its allies in emerging military technologies, Russia was now leading the development of the new class of hypersonic weaponry. Putin was specifically referencing his country’s new portfolio of novel hypersonic missiles, which the Russian president enthusiastically refers to in almost all his major speeches on national security. In early January 2020, he personally attended naval exercises in Crimea that included the Navy’s launching of the hypersonic Kinzhal (“Dagger”) missile by MiG-31K fighter jets.

Although these systems can target the US mainland, they do not appreciably augment the threat to the United States presented by Russia’s large arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which already travel at hypersonic speeds and can overwhelm US missile defences. By contrast, shorter-range hypersonic delivery systems could radically increase the challenge of defending NATO due to their amplifying the most threatening dimensions of Russia’s theatre-level politico-military strategy. In July 2018, Michael Griffin, undersecretary of defence for research and engineering, emphasised the tactical impact of hypersonic weapons since “these sorts of weapons bring to theater conflicts or regional conflicts … [v]ery quick response, high speed, highly maneuverable, difficult to find and track and kill.”

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